Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Pearce for her question. It reflects her longstanding interest in integrity matters. You've got to say that, at the last election, it was very clear that the Australian people voted for integrity, voted for transparency and voted for the return of good government. The Australian people roundly rejected the former government's record of rorts and cover-ups, and one of the most egregious examples of those rorts and cover-ups was the so-called sports rorts scandal, the report on which, by the former secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, has just been released.

What we've now learned is that this sports rorts scandal involved the former government ignoring recommendations from the relevant department and using colour coded spreadsheets which carved up funds by electorate for party advantage rather than on any kind of merits assessment. It was shameful. That's what we've learned. We found out yesterday, after years of cover-up, that even the member for Cook's most senior public servant thought that it was wrong. He found that there were significant shortcomings in the scheme and that there was an actual conflict of interest. Of course, sports rorts weren't the only example of behaviour like this under the former government. We also had the car park rorts, we had the Leppington Triangle and we had the member for Hume's grassgate scandal.

The Australian people said, 'Enough.' They elected a government that is dedicated to integrity and transparency, and we've wasted no time honouring our commitment to the Australian people. We've already introduced legislation for a national anticorruption commission with teeth, which is currently before a joint select committee. I'm looking forward to the report of the committee, which is being provided to this parliament this week—on Thursday. We hope to pass the bill by the end of this year and have the commission up and running by mid-2023. There could not be a starker contrast to the former government, who promised in December 2018 that they were going to establish a national anticorruption commission, and they never even introduced a bill. Unlike them, we promised a national anticorruption commission and we will deliver.

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